Month: September 2012

A Wiggles Farewell Tour Giveaway

Did you hear the news? The Wiggles are retiring! (I know, I know, there’s a joke in here somewhere, but I have a longstanding and perhaps inexplicable affection for the Wiggles, and so I decided to play this one straight.) Well, not all of the Wiggles, but three of the four original members are handing down their colourful jerseys to a new generation of Wiggles. According to the press release for their farewell tour, stopping in Ottawa on October 16, 2012:

The Wiggles, the fast-dancing, fun-loving Fab Four from Down Under, are returning to Canada (and select U.S. cities) with their brand new show CELEBRATION, which will reunite Original Yellow Wiggle Greg Page with Anthony, Jeff, and Murray for their final tour together at the original Wiggles. After 21 years of entertaining and educating children around the globe, Red Wiggle Murray Cook, Yellow Wiggle Greg Page and Purple Wiggle Jeff Fatt have decided to hang up their trademark colored jerseys to a new generation of Wiggles starting in 2013. The Wiggles have entertained children throughout the world for over two decades and are bringing all the excitement and joy of their movies and television shows right before your eyes, live on stage! Come Celebrate with Anthony, Greg, Murray, and Jeff!

Someone asked on a Facebook group recently if it was “worth it” to splurge on a set of Wiggles tickets for her family, and I had to chime in with an enthusiastic yes. It’s been (eek!) seven years since we splurged for floor seats for our Wiggly fan Simon, and I still remember the experience as a joyfully fun family adventure.

And I’m delighted to be able to share the Wiggly experience with a lucky Ottawa family!

Would you like to win your own tickets? I have a set of four to give away for the 2:30 pm show on October 16. Please note this is a Tuesday, so please don’t enter if you aren’t sure you can attend!

  1. This is a giveaway for a set of four tickets to the Wiggles live show at Scotiabank Place on Tuesday October 16 at 2:30 pm.
  2. To enter the giveaway, simply leave a comment on this post telling me who you would take to the concert.
  3. Everyone who “likes” Postcards from the Mothership on Facebook will get a bonus entry. (This promotion is in no way sponsored, endorsed or administered by, or associated with, Facebook.) If you already like Postcards from the Mothership on FB, just say so in your comment.
  4. This giveaway is open only to Canadian residents, excluding residents of Quebec. (sorry!)
  5. This giveaway will run until 11:59 pm EDT on Monday October 8, 2012.
  6. One winner will be chosen at random from all comments posted.
  7. If you win, you must be willing to provide your full name and contact information to me to share with Scotiabank Place. You will need photo ID to pick up your tickets at Scotiabank Place the day of the show.

Here’s a little bit more information about the show:

Children can have even more wiggly fun while they wait for the show by visiting www.WiggleTime.com, The Wiggles’ very own virtual world created specifically for preschoolers and their parents. Parents can monitor their child’s progress and have access to premium promotional offers, contests, merchandise discounts and presale Wiggles tickets! You can also follow the gang on Twitter via Twitter.com/ItsWiggleTime or become a fan of the group’s official Facebook page Facebook.com/TheWiggles

The Wiggles are proud to announce that their Canadian charity partner for October 2012 is UNICEF, receiving 50 cents from every ticket sold. The Wiggles have a long history with UNICEF including being named Goodwill Ambassadors in 2008, donating a special “handwashing” song to UNICEF in honour of Global Handwashing Day, (annually October 15), and the production of their book Travelling the World for UNICEF, available at www.TheWiggles.com, and of which a portion of proceeds is donated to UNICEF.

There are still tickets available for both shows on October 16. Visit Capital Tickets for details!

Edited to add: Congratulations to our winner: Jill Moffatt. Jill, I’ll be in touch to arrange for your tickets. Thank you to everyone who entered, and to the Wiggles for providing the tickets to give away.

In which she spills the beans on a secret she’s been (not very successfully) keeping

You may have picked up my not-so-subtle hints recently (so not good with the subtlty) that we have something big in the works for this fall. And by big, I mean biggest IN THE WORLD.

I have been trying to write this blog post for a while, and I can never figure out quite which tone to take. I still have trouble telling people I went on a free trip to Mexico last month because I write a blog. Hell, sometimes I still have trouble not apologizing for the fact that I write a blog at all – eight years later and I still twist my toe in the carpet when I tell people about the blog, even though it’s brought me not only amazing friends and connections but pretty much single-handedly launched my photography business and pays a steady part-time income and has led to a regular day job in social media and has brought me trips to Toronto and Vancouver and Mexico. And a cruise. Did I mention the cruise yet?

A CRUISE!!!!!!

Thanks to my amazing friends at Fisher-Price and their partnership with Royal Caribbean International, in three weeks the whole family will be taking a seven-night Caribbean cruise on the world’s largest cruise ship, the Allure of the Seas.

*pauses to shake head and pinch herself for the 100th time*

Although we leave in three weeks (!) I still don’t have a lot of the details. The ship itself sounds absolutely amazing, though: at capacity she holds more than 5000 passengers and nearly 2500 crewmembers, with more than 2000 staterooms on 16 decks. I simply can’t get my head around that sort of scale! I know we will make stops at Labadee, Haiti and Falmouth, Jamaica and Cozumel, Mexico. The ship has seven ‘neighbourhoods’ featuring a full-sized carousel, a zip line, five swimming pools and 10 hot tubs and a Starbucks. Talk about something for everyone!

Image courtesy of Royal Caribbean International

As excited as I am about all of that, you know what I’m most looking forward to? A whole week to simply enjoy my family. Cheesy as it sounds, the idea of simply being with them with no need to worry about cooking, tidying, running off to guitar lessons or getting the groceries or cutting the grass… just a week together with my menfolk. I honestly think that’s the most wonderful part of this whole crazy idea!

So I need a crash course in cruise culture. Anyone have any tips or advice? What to bring, what to avoid, how to tip, how to navigate two airports you’ve never been to before (LaGuardia and Fort Lauderdale) with three kids? Have you been to the ports? Are there excursions you’d recommend or avoid? And for that matter, any tips for traveling with kids at all? Share ’em up please, I’ve got a lot of learning to do in the next three weeks!!

Oh, and the biggest question of all? How will I survive a week without the Internet?!?

This week in pictures: brought to you by the letter F

This week’s photographs are brought to you by the letter F!

Lucas was having fun on his bike when I managed to get him to hold still for just a minute so I could get in front of him. F is for fun!

Boy on a bike

And he was definitely having fun with this cut-out on the lawn of Watson’s Mill last weekend. (I swear, I have no idea where the pose came from, but I nearly fell over laughing at him! For a four-year-old boy, he’s got a good grasp on what mothering should look like!) F is for Funny:

This mothering thing is giving me a headache

I keep trying to shoot more black and white photographs, but I keep getting seduced by the colours of autumn. I liked how this one turned out, even if they’re being a little less than cooperative with the faces. F is for Fence and Faces.

Boys on the fence

Speaking of the colours of autumn, F is for Farm Fence:

Farm fence

F is definitely for Fog. Shhhh, I may have been a little late for work last Monday when I got downtown and saw that rich, thick fog had completely enveloped the Parliament Buildings. You get the most magical light just when the fog is breaking up – that’s the rising sun throwing fire on to the windows of the East Block on Parliament Hill. What an incredibly beautiful morning it was!

East Block aglow

Did I mention F is for Fall? (See, I just can’t stay away from the colour!)

Autumn leaves

F is for, ummmmmm, feet trodding on ancient roots? No, eh? How about F is for friends? F is for fiendishly cute?

Little boy, big tree

F is for finished! 🙂

The joy of learning about gravity with Wheelies Loops and Swoops Amusement Park

Today, I’m blogging over on the new and improved FisherPriceMoms.ca site, telling you all about a fun way for toddlers and preschoolers to learn about gravity: the Fisher-Price Wheelies Loops and Swoops Amusement Park.

Spoiler alert: it looks a little bit like this!

C’mon over and take a peek! 🙂

In which she discovers the effect of a roll of toilet paper on a load of laundry

Have you ever wondered what might happen if you throw a roll of toilet paper into a load of laundry? Or moreso, a roll of one-ply paper on a load of dark dress clothes? Well wonder no more, bloggy peeps, because there is NOTHING I will not do in the name of scientific examination and blog fodder.

Le voila!

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Impressive, eh? And of the irony of sitting on the can just minutes before making this discovery, looking at the empty toilet paper holder and thinking, “That’s funny, I was sure I had an extra roll around here somewhere.”

My black dress pants, which I always wash on delicate and hang to dry. There are not enough lint brushes in the world to deal with this.

Untitled

And to complete our scientific journey of exploration, here is what a roll of one-ply tissue (more irony – we use one-ply because it breaks down easily, better for the septic system) looks like after an encounter with a high-efficiency front loader:

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Do you think having a wardrobe that looks like a snowstorm barfed on it is a decent reason to miss work on Monday?

This week in pictures: The blue dream of sky

I downloaded some new textures this week and I’ve been having fun with them. Some textures are very subtle, but these ones are a little more obvious. What do you think of the texture use? Do you like the enhancement or do you think it takes away from the image? I try not to fall into the trap of using textures to apologize for an otherwise poorly taken shot, but do admit to using them to add oomph to a shot I find less than compelling.

I love Watson’s Mill in any light, but I may have nearly done it to death, so I thought the texture would add a little variety. There was already a lot of green and gold in this shot as the fall colours start to come up, so I desaturated it a bit more to even them up with the tones in the texture.

Old mill

I used a texture from the same pack on these black-eyed susans. I’m still a little on the fence about how this came out. I tinkered with it for quite a while and then reverted to an earlier version. Oh the time I spend in Photoshop!

black-eyed susans

I used a bit of linen texture on this one to mask a tiny bit of motion blur. (In other words, what I just said I try not to do!)

Saxy

Speaking of motion – I like this shot of Lucas in motion on the swing because it’s a bit of a different angle, but I absolutely adore the ee cummings quote I found to go along with it: “I thank you God for this most amazing day, for the leaping greenly spirits of trees, and for the blue dream of sky and for everything which is natural, which is infinite, which is yes.”

"I thank you God for this most amazing day, for the leaping greenly spirits of trees, and for the blue dream of sky and for everything which is natural, which is infinite, which is yes." ~ e. e. cummings

Speaking of motion redux, we’ve been doing a lot of this lately. Zoom!

Zoom!

No sky and no motion, just an idea for a still life I’d been noodling since it’s back-to-school season.

apple on books

And last but not least, yet another collage of fair pictures. Oh how we love our fairs! This one features an afternoon of fun with Granny at the Richmond Fair last Sunday. The theme of the day was definitely squirt gun races – that’s Granny taking aim in the upper right, but it was Simon in the bottom frame who stole the day by winning against a full table not once but twice, earning his choice of any prize. We’re now calling him Old MacSimon Had a Farm!

Richmond Fair 2012

I loved Justin’s comment on Flickr – “That’s the smile of a man proud of his accomplishments.” Indeed!

Friday fun with Fisher-Price and the Imaginext Eagle Talon Castle

It helps to know, in reading this post, that we have a bit of a fixation with the Legend of King Arthur around our house. The very first night I met Beloved in a bar, he invited me back to his apartment to see his etchings and sketches based on the legends. Tristan is in fact named after a knight of the round table, and it was only by intervention on my part that he was not named Galahad or Lancelot. And so, when I opened the box on our latest shipment from Fisher-Price, I was instantly charmed and delighted by the Eagle Talon Castle.

I love the Imaginext toys because they invite the sort of flexible, creative play that I like to encourage in the boys. It’s funny watching Lucas lump them together, so the Imaginext T-Rex attacks the castle and Batman flies the Batcopter up to rescue the knights.

I also love a toy that sucks even the big boys into the play. The Eagle Talon castle is huge, which allows three bulky boys lots of room in front and behind to play with it. I keep putting it away and it keeps migrating back to the living room where I’ve found each of the boys playing with it at various times and best of all, found all three of them howling with laughter over it more than once. It makes me snicker every time one of them drops the draw bridge and the built-in electronic sound bleats out “Who is it?” In fact, it kind of inspired us to do this one fine summer evening (with equal parts apology and appreciation to Monty Python):

FP who is it

FP Arthur

FP taunts

FP Fetchez

FP vache 2

FP vache 3

FP run away

Any toy that gives us an opportunity to indoctrinate the kids with Monty Python humour is an instant favourite around our house!!

All silliness aside, this is a great toy and I’d highly recommend it for any kid who loves playsets and creative kind of play with role play and action figures. Remember the “Elements of Enrichment” chart I shared last month? I’d say this toy definitely satisfies the “curiousity and discovery” and the “creativity and imagination” categories. It’s also gets a big checkmark in the “sharing and cooperation” and “learning and communication” under social and emotional development. And the set mixes and matches wonderfully with all the terrific toys in the Imaginext lines.

Thanks for the laughs, Fisher-Price. All five of us love the Imaginext Eagle Talon Castle!

Disclosure: I am a Fisher-Price Play Ambassador and I receive special perks as part of my affiliation with this group. The opinions on this blog are my own.

* Vache sold separately!

The one where she hires an assistant and almost bans 3 year olds from her photography business

Way back at the end of June (oh, I am so behind in my portrait session blogging!) a client commissioned a portrait session out at Mer Bleue Bog. She wanted to give a portrait of her kids (ages 3 and 6 years) and her brother’s kids (ages 3 years and seven months) to her mother as a birthday gift. How much do I love this idea? Portraits make a wonderful gift for the grandparent who really doesn’t need any more tchotchkes, especially when you can bring several branches of the family tree together!

It was a warm sunny summer morning, perfect for portraits. While I’d always meant to get out there, I’d never been to Mer Bleue before, so the weekend before the boys and I had scouted it out. As you know, I do most of my sessions on the porch, and being out in the park I was a little worried about leaving my props and gear sprawled across the park while I paid attention to chasing the kids with my camera, so for the first time I hired an assistant to help me out with the shoot.

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That’s Tristan, in case you didn’t recognize him on the job. He’s pretty affordable – cost me $5 and a Tim Horton’s frozen lemonade, and he helped me out for the rest of the season whenever I had a portrait session away from the porch. Not only am I officially a small business, paying my way with taxes and whatnot, but now I’m an employer as well! 😉

So we had a beautiful summer morning, a well-prepared photographer, a gorgeous scenic location and four adorable kids. What could possibly go wrong, right? Oy.

I have to say, this was one of the most challenging photo shoots ever. The kids were perfectly adorable, but they were — kids. They had no interest whatsoever in sitting nicely on my blanket, or my little wicker sofa, or even (gasp!) my pretty red wagon. We were in the park and they wanted to explore, not listen to the crazy lady with the camera. I tried all my usual kid-whisperer tricks: jokes, games, reverse psychology (“I bet you can’t sit on this nice blanket until I count to five!”), follow-the-leader… nothing worked.

There was a lot of this going on:

Standoff

(I love this photo, to be honest. I call it “The Standoff” but it’s not exactly what the client had in mind for a sweet family photo for grandma.)

I could get a great picture of one cute kid:

Babe in the woods

(I love this shot, too! We were trying to get a shot of this guy and his big brother, but his brother had other ideas and kept wandering off. Mom and Dad were off wrangling big brother and this little guy was just waiting patiently in the woods, checking out the trees. I love love love the expression on his face! But alas, also probably not the kind of shot grandma wants to hang on the wall.)

And I had no problem sneaking up on two kids being adorable:

Cousins

Siblings

Getting three kids was a bit more of a challenge and I had to work pretty hard for that one:

Kiss

But no matter how much I cajoled, begged, joked, or sang, every time I got close to catching all four kids together, one would bolt or topple over or wander away or make scowly faces at the camera. It was really such a gong show that even Tristan noticed how hard of a time we were having. The two sets of parents and I couldn’t help but laugh (thank the universe for parents with a sense of humour!) and we were almost falling-down laughing by the end of a long, sweaty morning where we all tried just about every trick in the book to get the photo. We gave up pretty quickly on the idea of a “sitting nicely looking at the camera” photo and started aiming for “any shot with all four kids in the frame”.

I knew when we finally gave up that I had some pretty good shots and that grandma would get her portrait. But when I saw this photo at a decent size on my computer screen, I completely fell in love with it. Not only was this the shot I loved most from the session and the one that the client picked for grandma’s canvas, but it’s one of my favourite pictures of the whole summer. It says way more about childhood and family than four kids grinning at a camera ever could (in my absolutely biased opinion!)

Pulling the wagon

It’s funny how my heirarchy of planning started to fall apart. I was originally trying to pose them in the open shade and ended up in the far more challenging dappled sunlight. Nobody is looking at the camera. Nobody is smiling. Nobody is posed or really paying any attention at all to me. Just following them with my camera and watching for the moment and being ready when it happened made all the difference between settling for an okay shot and getting the one grandma would love. I like to think that’s where I’ve become really good in photography – being willing to chase the moment instead of forcing it. It makes for a much more natural sort of storytelling portrait.

But I have to admit, on the drive back to Manotick after this session, Tristan and I discussed at length the merits of amending my photography contract to ban three year olds. They’re as wilful as they are adorable!

This week in pictures: Chasing the light

Light can make the difference between an ordinary photo and an extraordinary one. The irony is that, especially with natural light, light is fickle and transient. A cloud can obscure light (and sunlight filtered through the very edge of a cloud can be truly magical) and light changes as the sun moves through the sky. I’ve walked by the same scene or object a dozen times and then one day the light will be hitting it just right and suddenly I have to stop and take a picture – like with this classic car. (Okay, truth be told, it was the shiny bits that got me to stop walking and take a good look, but the light made me stay and take a few pictures while I was there.) I love the play of the light on the chrome and the deep shadows and even the way the leaves dapple the light on the hood.

"In less enlightened times, the best way to impress women was to own a hot car. But women wised up and realized it was better to buy their own hot cars so they wouldn't have to ride around with jerks." ~ Scott Adams

As I was tying to get a good picture of these crab-apples, the light kept coming in and out from behind a cloud. When the sun hit the apples, it seemed to have an almost fairy-tale like vibe to it, but when the sun was behind the cloud it was flat and boring — just some fallen apples. I like the glow from this one, but I wish I’d taken the time to close down my aperture just a bit more to get more of the apples in focus, maybe to about half way toward the tree trunk.

Crab apples

I’d had the idea for this shot in my head for a while and one day during dinner I noticed how the setting sun was hitting the tree and treehouse. Tristan was happy to help me out with this one! I like how the light makes a sort of natural vignette that almost looks like softbox lighting.

Go out and play

Sometimes, it’s about the lack of light! This was me caught in the parking lot of the grocery store last week during a downpour, trying to decide how badly I needed to get into the store to do the weekly shopping. It was such a flat, dreary day that this quick snap taken for the purposes of whining about the rain on Facebook was the only photo I took all day. But it does have a certain abstract je-ne-sais-quoi, right? 😉

Trapped in the car trying to decide how badly I want to get groceries in this....

This one wasn’t about the light, but I was conscious of it when I put the elements of this one together on the way to Lucas’s first (sniff) day of school this week. I wanted the bus in the background for the school vibe, but the sun was bright and contrasty and his face would have been full of messy shadows, so I pulled him forward just enough to put him in the shade of a conveniently-placed telephone pole.

Off to school

And this wasn’t about the light at all, but how could I resist posing my menfolk at the crest of the hill at Mooney’s Bay? We are definitely coming back here for more photos!

They're on top of the world!

Alternate shot – I had a hard time choosing between these two for the photo of the day:

Hilltop

And some shots are not about the light at all, but just about catching those sweet moments that you know will be gone in a blink. I blogged about this one earlier in the week.

3 bikes

Ironic post-script to the bike story? Simon’s bike is in the repair shop. Shortly after I wrote the blog post, the gears jammed up again and the chain wouldn’t stay on. Oh well, we’ll get him up and rolling before the snow flies – I hope!

Autumn light is warm and flattering. You should get out and chase some light of your own! 🙂

In which she narrowly averts fratricide in a hotel double bed

One of my pet peeves about travel is that many hotels will not accommodate a family of five in a single room. When making a booking, before I check availability or other amenities, I always check to see whether they’ll accomodate two adults and three children in one room.

That’s what I was doing yesterday when I made a booking. The hotel’s website allowed me to select a room for two adults and three kids, and the online reviews were decent. The location was pretty good and the amenities were acceptable. Perfect! I had one more question that I couldn’t see addressed on the website, so I called and had my question answered, and the agent offered to book my reservation.

We went through everything: arrival and departure dates, number of guests, credit card number, etc. He asked for the ages of the boys and I gave it to him. We ended up with a room with two double beds, which would be tight, but we usually divide one kid per parent and the extra on whatever cot or pull-out is available. It was only for one night, so we could squeeze in. At $159, it was about what I expected to spend.

An hour or so later, when I checked my e-mail reservation, the price was stated as $219, but when I clicked through to the website, it confirmed the $159 price. So I called, and the agent confirmed the lesser price, which was good. “By the way,” I said, “I noticed when I was double checking the rates that you have a pool-side room for the same price. Can we have that?”

He put me on hold and checked. “Sure, I could do that, but it’s $175.”

Me: “No it’s not, it’s $159, I’m looking at it on your website.”

Him: “Oh, that’s the price for non-bed and breakfast. You have the bed and breakfast package.”

Me: “I don’t want a bed and breakfast price, I just want a bed. And a poolside room. Wait, I’m being charged for breakfast?”

Him: “Okay, can I put you on hold?” *pause* “Thanks for waiting. We only have bed and breakfast availabilities at that time.”

Me: “What?! You’re charging me for a breakfast I don’t want? That’s crazy! You can’t force me to pay extra for breakfast when you have non-breakfast rates on your website!”

Him: *unhelpful stammering*

Me: “Okay, putting that aside for a second, can you tell me if the poolside rooms are larger? Do they have a pull-out sofa or more room for the cot?”

Him: “Okay, can I put you on hold?” *pause* “The double room doesn’t have a sofa bed. We can provide you with a cot for $15.”

Me: “WHAT?! You’re going to charge me extra for the cot? Where the heck did you think the fifth person was going to sleep, in the bathtub?”

Him, clearly wishing he was anywhere else except taking the call from increasingly crazy lady: “Well, they’re kids, right? They can sleep in the bed together?”

I almost laugh at the idea. I can barely get them to share a living room at times, let alone a double bed. 170 collective pounds and twelve sprawling, poking, shoving limbs vying for real estate in one double bed had all the makings of a cage match. So not going to happen.

Needless to say, I cancelled the reservation. I’ve found a much nicer and more accommodating Holiday Inn Express for pretty much the same price with a junior suite: two queen beds and a queen-sized pull-out sofa. And free wifi, too! No children will be sacrificed to the gods of peaceful sleep during this hotel sojourn.

Moral of the story: Beware of hidden fees, and always ensure that each person has an actual place to sleep the next time you book a hotel room!

PS I thought about outing the hotel here, which is probably one of the most recognizable names in the industry and really a brand I had equated with a higher level of class and service — but I decided that it’s more about the funny story than the axe to grind with a particular chain. But still!

PPS This hotel booking is part of a VERY EXCITING ADVENTURE coming up for us next month and I am squirming to tell you about it. Let’s just say if you thought the Mexico adventure was cool, you ain’t seen nothing yet!